How To Love Book Marketing

I teach a lot of authors about book marketing and many start the workshops with dread, knowing they have to learn this stuff, but not really wanting to do it.

My aim is always to change their mindset to one of happily incorporating marketing into their daily lifestyle, and generally, by the end of the day, most authors are much happier! In today's article, Bryan Cohen talks about his own marketing change of heart.

If you had fun marketing would you be looking for advice on a book marketing blog?

Probably not. I imagine most people search these blog posts for a magic bullet. A marketing solution that takes less time and energy. A tactic that leads to increased sales and more time for writing.

I'm not sure this post fits the bill, but I will tell you what I've done to make space in my life for publicizing my books.

Stranger Sales

The summer after I graduated from college, my favorite acting professor invited me to New York City to run the marketing for her show that was part of the New York Fringe Festival. I'd had some success promoting student plays, once packing a 250-seat house to the brim by promoting an unknown but lewd play as an age 18 and up affair. My professor hoped I'd fill the seats in New York, but despite my best efforts, I failed to get the word out.

I understood what worked for marketing on a college campus to my friends and peers. Using flyers, Facebook events and cheap/free tickets, I was able to pack the house. The same tricks didn't work in the Big Apple, especially given the 50+ other shows going on at the same time. I'd failed to learn an important marketing truth:

What works for your friends and peers won't always work for strangers. And without strangers on board, your sales will be severely limited.

From Chore to Reward

The first few years of my writing career, I struggled mightily with my marketing. If it weren't for my skills in search engine optimization, my first few books wouldn't have sold at all. When more and more authors entered the fray of self-publishing, I knew I'd need to do more marketing to make my work stand out. The only issue was that whenever I even thought about marketing my brain seemed to shut off.

When I feel passionate about something, I will draw from the deepest possible reserves to complete it.

When my younger brother beat my race time for a 10-miler, I trained for four straight months to take the running record back. When I had the chance to enter an online course creation contest to win an iPad for my wife, I worked 16-hour days for three straight weeks to create/finish the course and win the prize. Clear goals excite me. Marketing has always felt like a never-ending process with no definitive chance of victory.

To make marketing a daily task, I would have to make it something to look forward to.

I work on marketing about five to 10 hours a week on average. Most of that time is spent on tedious tasks like changing out book blurbs, posting to free book websites and formatting. I would never do these mindless, time-consuming projects if it wasn't for the power of the podcast.

I'm passionate about self-publishing podcasts. I will only let myself listen to them while I work on tedious marketing tasks.

In the last few months alone, I've made a huge amount of progress on my tedious marketing tasks using this method. And when a task is too time-consuming, I save up my money to outsource the project through a website like ODesk.

Loving the Pitch

But marketing isn't all about tedium.

The most successful people are willing to do what other people don't want to do.

To make your book stand out among the hardest working authors in the biz, you need to use your brain to try new and unusual marketing methods. To make this happen for my own books, I went back to my theatrical roots.

I loved producing theatre because I was able to bring a group of people together for one incredible run of shows. Directors, actors, stage crew and the other folks involved become like a family for a month or two. There is little more I love than making that happen as a producer. It's like being the play's patriarch.

After some inspiration from horror author Timothy W. Long, I created a Facebook author event for books about writing. As part of the event, 16 authors discounted their books and participated in a live Q&A session. The authors told their fans about the event, which allowed their readers to find out about new authors at a significant discount. The event was a lot of hard work to organize, but the results spoke for themselves.

Over 600 readers attended March to a Bestseller and my website received more than 2,000 unique visitors the day the event went live. At one point, the books involved in the promotion took over every slot of the Amazon Reference-Writing Skills category's top 10.

My peers thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the event, and I made some lifelong connections. As I scanned through hundreds of Facebook notifications, I felt invigorated. Planning, moderating and contributing to the event helped me to apply my love for producing to my writing life. I finally figured out the best way for me to bring strangers to my work while loving every minute of it.

The best kind of marketing isn't about teaching yourself to do something you hate. It's about converting things you love to do into marketing. It's more than liking what you're selling. It's liking how you're selling.

If you can figure out how to do that, marketing your book may become something you look forward to. How strange.

What are your feelings about marketing? How have you learned to incorporate it into your daily author life? Please leave a comment below.

Bryan Cohen lives in Chicago with his wife and their Netflix account. He has written over 30 books, most of them filled with writer's block-busting creative writing prompts. His latest book is 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts, Volume 2.

Comments

Confused. And I handle the marketing for a small trailer-hitch company as my part-time gig. The problem with the digital age is that consumers are just so constantly bombarded with marketing that I can’t even imagine how I’ll get noticed. Even now, I wonder if the greatest novel ever written is languishing on some self-pubbed author’s Amazon account, to be read only be immediate family and his crit partner. But I’m an optimist. If I hang out with enough people smarter than me, someone is bound to come up with a plan!

Hey Ron, thanks for the comment! I agree that there’s a lot of marketing out there and it’s tough to be heard above all the noise. It can feel hopeless. In my opinion, you need to find some marketing you can do every day and you should deeply care about the method you use to market.

If you love speaking and talking about your books, going on podcasts or starting your own might be the way to get your marketing in. If you love creating art, you might want to create beautiful, alternate covers for your work and have your fans share or vote for them to spread the word. If you love music, create a soundtrack to go with your book and hold a contest to give it away to your biggest fans.

Most successful authors do a lot of marketing. If you can find a marketing method you enjoy, putting in those hours of spreading the word can become something you look forward to instead of something you dread.

Doesn’t seem to matter how much I learn about marketing. I can’t get enthusiastic about it. It feels so unnatural. Of course, I’ve always been a bit of a hermit. All social activity feels unnatural to me.

I think you need to expand your definition of marketing. There are non-social ways to engage in marketing. Would you rather write than pitch? Create a free short story or short non-fiction piece to funnel into your other books. You don’t have to talk to anybody, the people will come to you!

Think of five non-social things you like to do. Find a way to make each one of them reveal your work to the world. You don’t need to be salesy. All you need to do is repackage what you already enjoy doing in such a way that it will spread the word about your work.

I’ve written a dozen short articles on topics related to the subjects of my first two novels. They’re on my web site and available for free. But after Google’s last update, my traffic took a nose dive. I tried posting a few of the articles on free article web sites, but it didn’t bring me any traffic. I’ve posted a $.99 short story on kindle (been debating whether or not to make it free for a while), but it’s more satirical than my novels, and hasn’t gotten much attention.

Have you considered writing something that ties directly into your novel? It doesn’t have to be long. Just something that would get new readers interested in one or more of the characters in your novels. You could make that perma-free and perhaps that could non-socially bring new readers into your circle.

Plus, check out the long response I just gave Megaera’s comment. Perhaps that could help you to brainstorm marketing ideas as well.

I could easily tie my hypnosis MP3s into the novel. But I haven’t figured out how to market those either. I have thought about writing a tie-in short-story, but I haven’t come up with an idea that works with the same characters. Would a story with different characters work if it worked with a similar theme? I have one of those I could publish.

Can you step back about six steps and teach *how* to find a way to market that makes an author love how s/he markets? Especially for those of us who have absolutely no marketing background whatsoever? I can’t think of a single thing that I love that I can relate to marketing, and, like a lot of writers, I’m off the introvert end of the scale.

Thanks for dropping by, Megaera! Six steps taken. Why don’t I give you six steps as well :).

Six Steps to Create a Marketing Idea You Love:
1. Make a list of things you love to do or loved to do in your youth. At least 10 ideas in total.
2. Break the items down to their basic elements. For example, I loved producing and directing theatre. When you break that down you could say I enjoy creating events and bringing people to those events. Another example, if you love reading novels, you could say you enjoy seeing how other people tell stories.
3. Use those basic elements to brainstorm unconventional marketing tactics. For my producing and directing example, it was creating and moderating a large Facebook event. For the example of seeing how other people tell stories, you could run a writing contest on your website and give the participants a review copy of your book. This is not the time to think linear. Stretch your ideas for tactics as far as they can go.
4. Take your three best ideas and ask your peers, friends and loved ones which idea they think you’d enjoy the most. The people who know you best may know which idea will make you the happiest. They may also help you come up with ways to make the idea even stronger. Make sure to tap into your most positive friends who think anything is possible. Avoid the naysayers.
5. Brainstorm how you can make the idea a major success. This may involve seeing how others have done similar ideas. For my Facebook event, I went through Timothy Long’s “All You Can Read” event and took notes of what I should and shouldn’t do for mine.
6. Make your idea a reality. Enlist friends to help if you need them. Try to outsource all the parts of your idea you don’t enjoy doing. Ideally, this idea is easily replicable so that you can do it over and over again.

I think you missed the part where I told you I was off the introvert end of the scale [wry g]. Steps 4, 5, and 6 are actually the stuff of my worst nightmares because they require too much interaction and putting myself out there, so that’s counterproductive to the goal of making me love how I market right there. What I’m doing here discussing this with you is about at the edge of what I’m comfortable with socially, just to give you the scale I’m working with.

I appreciate the time you spent writing all that up, but maybe we need to go back a few steps further?

My website gets basically *no* traffic, so running anything that depends on interaction via my website is a non-starter. Yes, I’ve done the SEO thing to the best of my ability. No, it hasn’t improved my stats. Trying to lead people to it via guest blogging (which admittedly I gave up on some time back due to lack of results) and social media has not helped. I don’t have money to throw at the problem, either.

So maybe take a few more steps back? And give serious consideration to the fact that anything that asks me to put myself out there (or ask others to brainstorm or help) is absolutely going to make me want to run as far as I can in the other direction?

Hi Bryan
Great post. I don’t know many authors for whom marketing is the fun part!
The line that really struck me was ‘It’s about converting things you love to do into marketing.’ I attended one of Jo’s seminars a few weeks back and took something similar away from it in terms of content, but your post has made me think about process as well.
What processes do I enjoy? (other than writing, playing drums, eating chocolate:). Which of those processes can be turned into marketing?
Lots of ideas already swimming to the surface.
Thanks
Mike

Hey Megadera, I believe that if you take out step 4, you pretty much remove needing to deal with people. Step 5 is research. I didn’t talk to anybody to see how prior similar events had gone. Also, you don’t need to enlist friends to help on step 6. You can do it all yourself.

Let’s try something here. Do steps 1 and 2 for me. I will help you brainstorm on step 3 right here in the comments. I’m willing to help you on this, but you’ll need to give me the info of steps 1 and 2 first. Help me help you :).

Things I love to do, not in any particular order except for the first two: write, read, do historical and other research for my books, quilt, crochet, cross-stitch, play with my cats,
garden, play with graphics on the computer (although I am *no* expert), travel solo, camp out, identify wildflowers and other plants, make day trips up into the mountains and over to the coast, actively observe nature, weather, and the seasons, watch geysers (Yellowstone is one of my favorite places).

I can break down reading into meeting new people (characters, not other readers) and seeing new places. I often reread books just because I want to go back and visit with the characters.

I have a thing for color, which is the main purpose behind the needlework, the gardening, the graphics, and the wildflowers, although there’s also the concrete accomplishment (being able to hold something up and say, I made that) of most of the above as well.

I love to travel because I love to see new places and to explore. The best road is the one I’ve never driven before. Unfortunately, the money situation is such that I don’t get to do it that much. Certainly not enough to support anything regular on.

The research thing is related to the finding new places. I love finding out about things I never knew before. I used to be a librarian — something is wrong with my day if I don’t learn something new — but I can’t think of anything worse than trying to turn that into a regular blog post and make it into a slog of “*must* find new fact to blog about”. There’s a reason I call myself a professional dilettante [wry g].

AAMOF, I have a terrible track record of messing up hobbies and things I’m interested in by trying to make something other than just enjoyment out of them. I really don’t want to ruin any more of them in the name of marketing, either. Just so you know.

Before I take a deeper look into your step 2 evaluations, I want to point out a few things.

“I have a terrible track record of messing up hobbies and things I’m interested in by trying to make something other than just enjoyment out of them. I really don’t want to ruin any more of them in the name of marketing, either. Just so you know.”

You’re really giving yourself an out here, M. It’s almost like you’re saying, “Just so you know, I’m probably not going to do anything you suggest, and if you do, it will ruin something I love.” You’re entitled to your opinion, of course, but these sorts of statements can easily become self-fulfilling prophecies.

If you say something isn’t going to work out, you’re probably right. If you leave that kind of “backdoor talk” out of your vocabulary, your chances of success go up dramatically. This goes for everyone.

“Unfortunately, the money situation is such that I don’t get to do it that much. Certainly not enough to support anything regular on.”

If you do defy the odds and get a marketing method to work to sell your books, you may be able to do more things you love. That’s motivation. Making more money to travel more often is a great goal to shoot for.

You may never love marketing as much as you love the activities on your list, but if doing something uncomfortable, difficult or downright panic-attack-causing gets you closer to doing something amazing, that “painful” activity may be worth it.

Alright, brass tacks. Here are some marketing ideas that come to mind from the things you love to do, M.

1. Meeting New Characters
– Research characters similar to your own, write a non-fiction book about creating such characters. Include links in your non-fiction book to your fiction.
– Create characters based on a place you’ve been. Submit your book or info about the book to tourism agencies or local businesses in that area.
– Collaborate with another author to let your characters meet their characters. Both of you can promote the book.

2. Love for Color
– Write a book about the presence of color in your favorite works and mention your books along the way. Link to your books throughout the color book.
– Create different covers for one of your books and get readers to vote on which cover they like the most. This will get readers invested in the book.
– Create a blog in which you give yourself a color/art related challenge to do for 30-straight days. Make sure the blog is packed with links to your books.

3. Travel
– Create a crowdfunding campaign in which your readers choose what activities you do (and write about) while traveling (author Joe Bunting just did this with a Paris trip on Kickstarter)
– Ask your readers where they would most like to travel. Research the winning location and write a subscriber-only short story set in the location. Promote the story as a freebie for readers to subscribe to your email list.
– Ask readers to share their travel stories, research the ones that sound the most interesting and write short stories based on their experiences.

Keep in mind that marketing is about making a two-way connection with readers. If you are unwilling to make the connection on your end, why should readers connect with you?

Well, the whole point (or at least the title) of your article was how to *love* book marketing. This reply feels very bait and switch.

The most important thing about this is that all of these ideas seem to be predicated on the pre-existence of a reader base with which to interact, too. If I don’t have that *first*, I’ll just get a lot of crickets chirping when I put all this effort into this painful thing (at least that’s what’s happened so far — and I’d already done a couple of the things on your list).

This all feels very fake and forced to me. How do I find readers in ways that *don’t* feel fake and forced to me? But more importantly, how do I find the people to interact with *first*? It’s not a matter of “if you build it, they will come.” How do I get them interested in these things I’m to build? (and by it, I mean all the things you suggest, *not* the books themselves).

*That’s* what I need help with. The horse first, then I’ll be glad to interact with the cart.

Hey, M, thanks for keeping this thread going. Some of the suggestions are geared toward getting new readers and the ones that aren’t can be done as part of guest posts or free books posted on Amazon to convert them into reader-gathering efforts. Remember, they’re just suggestions. Nothing more. If you feel like all the ideas are fake and forced, come up with some that aren’t. My suggestions were meant to get the ball rolling :).

I think that many authors find their readers in different ways. For my author platform, I created a website and set up an email list with a free book download. I also set up a Facebook page and Twitter account. I blogged and slowly but surely people found my posts. The ones who liked it signed up either on my email list, Facebook or Twitter. I’ve had larger numbers signups when I’ve run major promotions like March to a Bestseller, blog tours and ideas on par with the ones I suggested above. There was no short, quick and easy solution and it took a lot of hard work to build up my base of subscribers.

On the title of the article, I think you need to consider what love means in this context. How often do you love something or someone 100% of the time? I love my wife. I worked hard to understand her and become a better person to make that love possible. When we’d hit a rough patch early on in our relationship, I would consider bailing because it was difficult. Instead, I put in the hours necessary to actively love her and to improve myself (and she did the same). We’ve faced challenges and there will be many more. But that’s how love is. It’s hard work but it’s worth it.

Finding a way to love your marketing is exactly the same way. You won’t love it the whole time. That’s impossible. But you will appreciate the hard work you’ve put in and be satisfied with the accomplishments that result.

This is such a great post. I am an introvert, so when I began marketing I viewed it with something akin to terror. But now I’ve taught myself to view marketing as game. So, if something isn’t working, I change the game. This approach, keeps it fun and playful and challenges me to keep thinking outside the box.

Even the word marketing makes my eyes glaze over! I do spend 45 minutes a day on Facebook and Twitter getting the word out about my book and Process Oriented Psychology work and reading blog posts like this! I even have had 2 articles in the Sydney Morning Herald Newspaper (Australia) and 4 radio interviews lately. My website is full of articles and useful information and blogs. I just wrote my first guest blog. Yeah.
That has been great but I feel my life has been recently taken over by this lately with very little result in reaching out beyond my circle, so to speak.
So, I have now come to the conclusion that I need an expert and proven E. BOOK MARKETER that doesn’t charge a fortune! Can out there who can recommend someone? They need to have an interest in Buddhism and therapy or know how to reach people in that area.
Thank you. Your time, energy and information is invaluable and warms my heart and gives me hope!

I feel the same way as you do about Facebook and Twitter marketing. Congratulations on your recent newspaper articles and radio interviews!

I don’t have any professional marketer recommendations for you, but as a clear-minded Buddhism practitioner I’m sure you can think of some unique marketing ideas. A massive free in-person meditation meetup where you give out a free sample of your book? An association with a Buddhist temple?

Try something new that may reach a lot of people and see how things go!

First of all, I’m impressed that you can listen to a podcast and do book marketing at the same time. If I could do that, I’d also listen to podcasts! I love your story about the difference between pitching to friends and strangers. That’s the crux, no? BTW, I’m doing my first Fringe Festival in correlation with my book release. It’s the first biography on Stella Adler, so being a part of Fringe and having my face out there with all the actors and audiences should prove an interesting effort in marketing. We’ll see.

Thanks, Sheana. What great subject matter for a book! That does seem like a fantastic marketing effort. I wish you much luck.

I can only do the tedious marketing tasks when I listen to podcasts. Sending out similar emails to folks, posting links on Twitter, etc. When I’m actually interacting with people, I’d get too distracted :).

I live the idea of putting free content out there. What do writers love to do more than write?
The social media thing is a slow slog for me. I can’t bring myself to engage insincerely, and I don’t want to be one of those spammy authors that clogs up my Twitter feed.
Thanks for the great article!

It’s not letting me reply to your last comment, so I’ll just comment further down here.

And now we finally reach what I’m truly finding frustrating:

“For my author platform, I created a website and set up an email list with a free book download. I also set up a Facebook page and Twitter account. I blogged and slowly but surely people found my posts. The ones who liked it signed up either on my email list, Facebook or Twitter. I’ve had larger numbers signups when I’ve run major promotions like March to a Bestseller, blog tours and ideas on par with the ones I suggested above. There was no short, quick and easy solution and it took a lot of hard work to build up my base of subscribers. ”

I’ve been doing exactly the same thing you describe above for well over a year. So far I’ve been able to collect *two* subscribers for my email list. Period. I have a few more people friended on my Facebook account, but 99% of them are people I know for other reasons who aren’t interested in my writing, and I’ve had *no* luck getting people who *are* interested in my writing to find me on Facebook. I have *no* website traffic to speak of, either.

So what *else* can I do? That’s what I want to know. If the standard ways of building an email list or a platform aren’t *working* for me, what do I do *then*?

This was what I meant by backing up a few steps. Back me up to the point where I have some *successful* methods for gathering at least a starter group of readers instead of the stuff I keep reading over and over everywhere like what you said above (if I had a nickel for every time I’ve read something almost verbatim to what I quoted above, I could take us out to a very nice meal — tell me a method I *haven’t* read before).

I can come up with stuff online once I’ve got people to interact with, and probably build something from there. But horse before cart, please!

My tuppence worth is to get off your own site and onto other people’s. Very few people will find an author’s website in the bazillions out there. Guest blogging on other sites is a good way to reach another audience – and for introverts, all can be done via email. I also get most signups to my fiction list from the back of my books – so make sure you direct people to sign up there, and then you can concentrate on marketing the book itself. Plus, you should be writing more books.

Thanks, Joanna for linking to that post (and for letting me be a part of your site today)! I agree on the guest posting front. My first blog tour back in 2011 helped to bring new followers/traffic to my website. The back of the book links are also key.

And that post is a treasure trove of info! So is the book it’s based on :).

That’s what I’ve been trying to *do*, Joanna. The point is, I’m getting absolutely no results.

So I guess this is where the conversation ends *again*?

You seem to have a genius for finding guest bloggers who just say the same things over and over again without anything new, and who don’t answer with anything new when specifically asked. What’s the point in repeating the same things over and over again?

It’s awesome, M, that you’re so committed to getting your work out there. You have obviously done a lot of work to spread the word about your books. Also, you’re passionate, which is a wonderful trait for an author to have.

Taking a look at your website, it’s very well designed. Kudos on that.

I downloaded your 99 cent book Homesick. Here are a few things I would do to apply Joanna’s recommendations:
1. You’re listing web addresses in different parts of the book (to your website, etc.), but you have not turned those into links. Make sure these are clickable links so that people can easily click through to your website and other works. Readers don’t like making the extra effort.
2. You include excerpts from your four novels in the back of the short story. You could try including a link to the other books at the end of each excerpt, making it easy for folks to click over to buy. Remember to make the links clickable.
3. There is no link to subscribe to your blog in the book. In fact, there’s no way to subscribe to your blog (aside from an RSS feed) that I can find on the blog. Maybe you could put an email sign up form (you can use a free email service like MailChimp) in the area on the sidebar where you ask people to email you for a free copy of your short story.

I think you’re making great strides toward an awesome marketing campaign. A few tweaks here and there and you’ll start to gain subscribers. I wish you much luck.

Feel free to continue the conversation below. I’d love to hear your results from making these or any other changes to your campaign.

I’ve been meaning to do the link thing for a while — I just now figured out how to put a link into an ebook, and needed the kick in the pants to do that part, which I just spent most of the afternoon doing. I do appreciate the suggestions. And the book purchase [g]. How does one do an email sign up for blog posts? Treat each blog post as a newsletter? I don’t understand.

However, it still leaves me with the conundrum — if nobody’s buying the books or visiting the website, they’re never going to see any of this wonderful stuff I’m doing in those places in the first place. And, no, I’m *not* making great strides. I’m making baby steps, most of which aren’t getting me anywhere but falling down on my backside. If I was making great strides I wouldn’t be begging for ways to make those strides, honest.

Also, Joanna? Everything on that list you sent me the link to? I’ve done. I remember reading the article when I first found your blog and going down and checking stuff off, actually. Also, going out to other people’s blogs and trying to network that way has done very little if anything towards driving traffic to my site or my blog, or to my books.

*New* ideas, pretty please? Ones that function on the assumption that you’re starting from scratch with *no* readers? Even people who already have some readers could use *those* kinds of ideas!

I’m just starting the madness of trying to stand out above all the social media noise. It’s extremely overwhelming some times and seemingly impossible the rest of the time. My experience so far seems that people are not actually reading any of the content I put out, but will retweet and follow for the sake of numbers. My new series is adult oriented and I get a lot of retweets and follows from people who clearly are not in that demographic. I’m not looking for numbers but quality. I’m glad I’m not the only one going through this.

Thanks for dropping by, David. It’s great that you’re getting some RTs, even though its not from the kind of people you’d expect. I’ve never been completely comfortable using Twitter, and that’s why I’ve tried to find other marketing methods that were more up my alley.

It’s fun to try to strike out to new territory. The first people who were Twitter masters likely got a lot out of it. As more and more people try to do what they did, newer users can’t help but have diminishing returns. But if you’re the first person to try something and its a success, you may get the results you’re looking for.

Thanks for the ideas! I’m very new to book marketing myself. I resisted gathering emails for a long time, because I thought it would take a lot of time to create something to send. I’m now using Flipboard as a way of curating posts on Facebook and my blog into a weekly review. Once you get set up, it’s really quick and easy to do. Ideas on book marketing I’ve found are at my post here: http://dailyplanit.com/2014/02/23/checklist-to-market-an-ebook/. Now I must go put more links in my eBook!

The article is great, and the comments are even better. I’m just starting out on this crazy ride and really appreciated the practical suggestions you gave in comments. (Thank you!) Having just started my author site, I’m dealing with the traffic issue, but participate in a multi-author site that, after 10 months, is getting off the ground. Since I”m in this for the long haul, I’m hoping to use all of your suggestions above.

And to M – if only fabric wasn’t so costly, I’d make quilts in themes around my books. Perhaps when they sell I can do that. 🙂 And Montana! My home state. 🙂

Thanks, Robyn! It’s great that you’re looking at this with the “long haul” in mind. I started building my online presence in 2008 and there’s still a lot of room for improvement. Maybe by the time I reach the decade mark I’ll have it all figured out :).

I’ve done a lot of reading on marketing and promotion and after several years of research, I’ve heard the same complaint over and over. Advertising does not guarantee sales. What it does do is increase visibility and the chances to be discovered by readers. Ultimately, if marketing in itself doesn’t have any guarantees, then why do it? My attitude now is to do what is within my means and do it because it’s either fun and/or something I can learn and grow from!

I agree, Kit, do what you love and have a good time doing it. Just make sure you don’t use the “if (blank) in itself doesn’t have any guarantees, then why do it?” mindset to skip out on tough things that need to be done like writing, editing and list building :).

For many authors, marketing is a foreign concept and can be very uncomfortable. The key is pushing through this and being open to taking on new responsibilities. Books won’t sell themselves, unfortunately!

The comments on this blog are so great, straight to the point. Marketing seems to need loads of persistence a trait we all have to develop. I like the idea that you put forward that focusing on the product rather than self-promotion might be an easier and more comfortable task.

Agreed, Sean. Authors tend to be a little self-deprecating, and even though we’re typically fantastic people who readers want to get to know, we may not feel that way ourselves. If we can’t get over those self-esteem issues, pushing the books we’ve created can be an easier prospect. Thanks for dropping by.

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Most of the information on this site is free for you to read, watch or listen to, but The Creative Penn is also a business and my livelihood.
So please expect hyperlinks to be affiliate links in many cases, when I receive a small percentage of sales if you wish to purchase. I only recommend tools, books and services that I either use or people I know personally. Integrity and authenticity continue to be of the highest importance to me.
Read the privacy policy here.
I hope you find the site useful!
Thanks - Joanna

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Thanks for visiting The Creative Penn

Most of the information on this site is free for you to read, watch or listen to, but The Creative Penn is also a business and my livelihood.
So please expect hyperlinks to be affiliate links in many cases, when I receive a small percentage of sales if you wish to purchase. I only recommend tools, books and services that I either use or people I know personally. Integrity and authenticity continue to be of the highest importance to me.
Read the privacy policy here. Read the Cookie policy here.
I hope you find the site useful!
Thanks - Joanna